“Of course not,” said the court conjurer, clearly stung by her words but refusing to admit it. “I just thought that, like civilized people, we might share a moment of breakfast.” Aegwynn smiled, and Khadgar saw that it was a cruel smile. “I am as old as many dynasties, and got over my girlish indulgences early in my first century. I knew fully what I was doing coming to your chambers last night.” “I thought…” said Nielas. “I just thought…” He struggled for the right words. “That you, of all the Order, would be the one to charm and tame the great, wild Guardian?” said Aegwynn, the smile growing wider. “That you could break her to your will, where all the others had failed, through your charm and wit and parlor tricks? Harness the power of theTirisfalen to your own chariot? Come now, Nielas Aran.“He took control, Gul’dan,” Cho’gall said quietly, pacing beside him but staying beyond the warriors’ reach. “While you were unconscious! He attacked the Shadow Council and killed most of them! Only you and I and a few of the lesser warlocks remain!” Gul’dan shook his head, trying to clear it. He still felt fuzzy, unfocused, and from what Cho’gall said this was not a good time to lack clarity. But what the ogre had said made him more confused rather than less. Killed Blackhand? Destroyed the Shadow Council? It was insane! “Who?” he demanded again, twisting to face Cho’gall over the warriors’ broad shoulders. “Who did this?” But Cho’gall had slowed his steps, falling back,Medivh was gone a full two weeks, and by that time, Khadgar had claimed the library as his own. Each morning he rose for breakfast, gave Moroes a perfunctory update as to his progress (which the castellan, as well as Cook never gave wow power leveling any indication of curiosity about), then buried himself away within the vault. Lunch and supper were brought to him, and he often worked into the night by the soft bluish light from the glowing balls. He adjusted to the nature of the tower as well. There were often images that hung at the corner of his eye, just a twinkling of a figure wow power leveling in a tattered cloak that would evaporate when he turned to look at it. A half-finished word that drifted on the air. A sudden coldness as if a door or window had been left open, or a sudden change of wow power leveling pressure, as if a hidden entrance had suddenly appeared. Sometimes the tower groaned in the wind, the ancient stones shifting on each other after centuries of construction. Slowly, he learned the nature, if not the exact contents, of the books that were within the library, foiling the traps that were placed around the most valuable tomes. His research served him well in the last case. He soon became as zxcmianbao expert at foiling wow power leveling spell mechanisms and weighted traps as he had been with locked doors and hidden secrets in Dalaran. The trick for most of them was to convince the locking mechanism (whether magical or mechanical in nature) that the lock had not been foiled when in reality it had been. Determining what set the particular trap off, whether it was weight, or a shifting bit of metal or even exposure to the sun or fresh air, was half the battle to defeating it. There were books that were beyond him, whose locks foiled even his modified picks and dexterous knife. Those went to the wow power leveling highest level, toward the back, and Khadgar resolved to find out what was within them, either on his own or by threading the knowledge out of Medivh. He doubted the latter, and wondered if the master mage had used the library as anything else than a dumping ground for inherited texts wow power leveling and old letters. Most mages of the Kirin Tor had at least some semblance of order to their archives, with their most valuable tomes hidden away. But Medivh had everything in a hodgepodge, as if he didn’t really need it. a look of surprising fear crossing both his faces. Gul’dan turned back around just as a powerful figure strode forward. And at once, seeing the massive warrior in his black plate armor, the colossal black warhammer held so easily in his hands, Gul’dan understood. Doomhammer. “So you are awake.” Doomhammer all but spat the words as the warriors stopped before him. They released Gul’dan’s arms suddenly and the orc warlock was unable to stop himself from crumpling to the ground. He looked up, on his knees, and gulped at the naked fury and hatred he saw in his captor’s face. “I—” Gul’dan began, but Doomhammer cut him, backhanding him hard enough to lift him off the ground and drop him in a heap several feet away. “Silence!” the new Horde leader snarled. “I did not say you could speak!” He strode closer, raising Gul’dan’s chin with the head of his fearsome weapon. “I know what you have done, Gul’dan. I know how you controlled Blackhand, you and your Shadow Council.” He laughed, a harsh sound filled with bitterness and disgust. “Oh, yes, I know about them. But your warlocks will not help you now. They are dead, many of them, and the few who remain are chained and watched.” He leaned closer. “I rule the Horde now, Gul’dan. Not you, not your warlocks. Doomhammer alone. And there will be no more dishonor! No more treachery! No more deceit and lies!” Doomhammer rose to his full impressive height, towering over Gul’dan. “Durotan died from your scheming, but he will be the last. And he will be avenged! No more will you rule our people from the shadows! No more will you control our fate and direct us for your own sordid purpose! Our people will be free of you!” You have wasted much of your potential as it is, do not tell me that life in the royal court has corrupted you utterly. Leave me some respect for you.” “But if you weren’t impressed,” said Nielas, his mind wrapping around what Aegwynn was saying, “if you didn’t want me, then why did we…” Aegwynn provided the answer. “I came to Stormwind for one thing I could not provide for myself, a suitable father to my heir. Yes, Nielas Aran, you can tell your fellow mages in the Order that you managed to bed the great and mighty Guardian. But you will also have to tell them that you provided me with a way of passing on my power without the Order having any further say in it.” “I did?” The results of his actions began to sink in. “I suppose I did. But the Order would not like…” “To be manipulated? To be countered? To be fooled?” said Aegwynn. “No, they will not. But they will not act against you, for fear that I truly do have some romantic interest in you. And take this solace—of all the mages, wizards, conjurers, and sorcerers, you were the one with the most potential. Your seed will protect and strengthen my child and make him the vessel for my power. And when he is born and weaned, you will even raise him, here, for I know he will follow my path, and even the Order would not want to miss that opportunity to influence him.” Nielas Aran shook his head. “But I…” He stopped for moment. “But did you…” He stopped again. At last when he spoke, there was finally some fire in his eyes, and steel in his voice. “Good-bye, Magna Aegwynn.” “Good-bye, Nielas Aran,” said Aegwynn. “It has been…pleasant.” And with that she turned on her heel and was gone from the room.
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“You seem to have gone to a great deal of trouble,” she said, and her face was unreadable to Khadgar. “With sufficient magic and desire, nothing is impossible,” said the man, and turned over his hand, palm upward. Floating above his palm, a white orchid bloomed. Aegwynn took the flower, raised it perfunctorily to her nose, then set it down on the table. “Nielas…” she began. “Breakfast first,” said the mage Nielas. “See what a court conjurer may whip up first thing in the morning. These berries were picked from the royal gardens not more than a hour ago….” “Nielas,” Aegwynn said again. “Followed by slices of butter-fed ham and syrup,” continued the mage. “Nielas,” Aegwynn repeated. “Then perhaps some eggs of thevrocka, poached at the table in the shells by a simple spell I learned out on the isles…” said the mage. “I am leaving,” said Aegwynn, simply. A cloud passed over the mage’s face. “Leaving? So soon? Before breakfast? I mean, I thought we would have a chance to talk further.” “I am leaving,” said Aegwynn.The young would-be apprentice entered the library. On one side of the room were those volumes (and remains of volumes) that the cricket had determined were “safe,” while the other half of the room was filled with the (generally more complete) volumes that were noted as being trapped. The great tables were covered wow power leveling with loose pages and unopened correspondence, laid out in two semiregular heaps. The shelves were entirely bare, the chains hanging empty of their prisoners. Khadgar could sort through wow power leveling the papers, but better to restock the shelves with the books. But most of the volumes were untitled, or if titled, their covers so barely worn, scuffed, and torn as to be illegible. The only way to determine wow power leveling contents would be to open the books. Which would set off the trapped ones. Khadgar looked at the scorched mark on the floor and shook his head. Then he started looking, first among wow power leveling the trapped volumes, then among the untrapped ones, until he found what he was looking for. A book marked with the symbol of the key. It was locked, a thick metal band holding it closed, secured by a lock. Nowhere in his searches had Khadgar come zxcmianbao across wow power leveling a real key, though that did not surprise him, given the organization of the room. The binding was strong, and the cover itself was a metal plate bound in red leather. Khadgar pulled the flat pieces of keys from his pouch, but they were all insufficient for the large lock. Finally, using the tip wow power leveling of his scraping knife, Khadgar managed to thread the sliver of metal through the lock, and it gave a satisfying “click” as he drove it home. Khadgar looked at the cricket he kept on the table, and it was still silent. “I have my own tasks to complete, and little time for the pleasantries of the morning afterward.” The court conjurer still looked confused. “I thought that after last night you would want to remain in the castle, at Stormwind, for a while.” He blinked at the woman, “Wouldn’t you?” “No,” said Aegwynn. “Indeed, after last night, there is no need for me to remain at all. I have attained what I have come here for. There is no need for me to stay any longer.” In the present, Khadgar winced as the pieces fell into place. Of course the mage’s voice sounded familiar. “But I thought…” stammered the mage Nielas, but the Guardian shook her head. “You, Nielas Aran, are an idiot,” said Aegwynn simply. “You are one of the mightiest sorcerers in the Order of Tirisfal, and yet, you remain an idiot. That says something about the rest of the Order.” Nielas Aran bridled. He meant to look irritated, but only looked petulant. “Now, wait a moment….” “Surely you did not think that your natural charms alone brought me to your chamber, nor that your wit and sense of whimsy distracted me from our discussion of conjuration rites? Surely you realize that I cannot be impressed by your position as court conjurer like some village cowherd would? And surely you must realize that seduction works both ways? You are notthat big an idiot, are you, Nielas Aran?”
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He stepped within the circle, spoke the words that needed to be spoken, made the motions with his hands in perfect harmony, and unleashed the energy within his mind. He felt the release as something connected within his mind and soul, and he called the magic forth. “Show me what is happening in Medivh’s quarters,” he said, his mind giving off a nervous tic, hoping that the Guardian’s wards did not apply to his apprentice. Immediately, he knew the spell had gone wrong. Not in a major fashion, with the magical matrices collapsing upon themselves, but in a slight misfire. Perhaps the wards did work against him, redirecting his vision elsewhere, to another scene. He knew he was off by several clues. First off, it was now daylight, Second, it was warm. And last, the location was familiar. He had not been here before, exactly, at least not in this particular spire, but it was clear he was at Stormwind Keep, overlooking the city below. This was one of the taller spires, and the room was similar in general design to that where the two members of the Order had met their end months earlier. Yet here the windows were large and opened onto great white parapets, and a warm scented breeze stirred diaphanous draperies.Khadgar shook his head and went back to where he had left his scribe’s tools. He spilled out a thin wooden pen with a handful of metal nibs, a stone wow power leveling for sharpening and shaping the nibs, a knife with a flexible blade for scraping wow power leveling parchment, a block of octopus ink, a small dish in which to melt the ink, a collection of thin, flat keys, a magnifying lens, and what looked at first glance like a metallic cricket. He picked up the cricket, turned it on its back, and using a specially-fashioned pen nib, wound it up. A gift from Guzbah upon Khadgar completing his first training as a scribe, it had proved invaluable in the youth’s perambulations among the halls of the Kirin Tor. Within was contained a simple but effective spell that warned when a trap was in the offing. As soon as he had wound it one wow power leveling revolution, the metallic cricket let out a high-pitched squeal. Khadgar, surprised, almost dropped the detecting insect. Then he realized that the device was merely warning about the intensity of the potential danger. Khadgar looked at the piled wow power leveling volumes around him, and muttered a low curse. He retreated to the doorway, and finished zxcmianbao winding the cricket. Then he brought the first book he had picked up, the ticking one, over to the doorway. The cricket warbled slightly. Khadgar wow power leveling set the trapped book to one side of the doorway. He picked up another volume and brought it over. The cricket was silent. Khadgar held his breath, hoped that the cricket was enchanted to handle all forms of traps, magical and otherwise, and opened wow power leveling the book. It was a treatise written in a soft feminine hand on the politics of the elves from three hundred years back. Khadgar set the handwritten volume to the other side of the doorway, and went back for another book. Multicolored birds perched within golden hoops around the perimeter of the room. Before Khadgar a small table was set with white porcelain plates edged with gold, the knifes and forks made of the precious metal as well. Crystal bowls held fruits—fresh and unblemished, the morning dew still clinging to the dimples of the strawberries. Khadgar felt his stomach rumble slightly at the sight. Around the table hovered a thin man unknown to Khadgar, narrow-faced and wide-foreheaded, with a slender moustache and goatee. He was draped in an ornate red quilt that Khadgar realized must be a dressing gown, cinched at the waist with a golden belt. He touched one of the forks, moving it a molecule’s length sideways, then nodded in satisfaction. He looked up at Khadgar and smiled. “Ah, you are awake,” he said in a voice that almost sounded familiar to Khadgar as well. For an instant, Khadgar thought that this vision could see him, but no, the man was addressing someone behind him. He turned to see Aegwynn, as youthful and beautiful as she had been on the snowfield. (Was it earlier than that date? Later? He could not tell from her appearance.) She wore a white cape with green lining, but this was made of silk now, not fur, and her feet were shod not in boots but in simple white sandals. Her blond hair was held in place with a silver diadem.
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For the next day, there was the odd feeling of another presence in the tower, a new planetary body whose very gravity changed the orbits of all the others. This new planet caused Cook to shift to a larger set of pans, and Moroes to move through the halls at more random times than normal. And even Medivh himself would send Khadgar on some errand within the tower, and as the young mage left he would hear the whisper of a heavy cloak on the stonework behind him. Medivh volunteered nothing, and Khadgar waited to be told. He dropped hints. He waited patiently. Instead he was sent to the library to continue his studies and practice his spells. Khadgar descended the curved stairs for half a rotation, stopped, then slowly climbed back up, only to see the back of a black cloak glide into the Guardian’s laboratory. Khadgar stomped down the stairs,Khadgar sat down and the chair rocked severely. He stood up again, and saw that the uneven legs had shifted off a thick tome wow gold with a metallic cover. The front cover was ornate, and the page edges clad in silver. Khadgar opened the text, and as he wow gold did so he felt something shift within the book, like a slider moving down a metal rod or a drop of mercury moving through a glass pipe. Something metallic unwound within the spine of the tome. The book began to tick. Quickly Khadgar closed wow gold the cover, and the book silenced itself with a sharp whirr and a snap, its mechanism resetting. The young man delicately set the volume back on the table. That was when he noticed the scorch marks on the chair he was using, and the floor beneath it. “I can see why you go through so many assistants,” said Khadgar, slowly wandering through the room. The situation did not improve. Books were wow gold hanging open over the arms of chairs and metal railings. The correspondence grew deeper as he moved farther into the room. Something had made a nest in one corner of the zxcmianbao bookshelf, and as Khadgar pulled it from the shelf, a small shrew’s skull toppled out, crumbling when it struck wow gold the floor. The upper level was little more than storage, books not even reaching the shelves, just piled in higher stacks, foothills leading to mountains leading to unattainable peaks. And there was one bare spot, but this one looked like someone had started a fire in a desperate attempt to reduce the amount of paper wow gold present. Khadgar examined the area and shook his head—something else burned here as well, for there were bits of fabric, probably from a scholar’s robe. considering options of who the Emissary was. A spy for Lothar? Some secretive member of the Order? Perhaps one of the members from the Kirin Tor, the one with the spidery handwriting and the venomous theories? Or maybe some other matter entirely? Not knowing was frustrating, and not being trusted by the Magus seemed to make matters worse. “We’ll be told when we need to know,” Khadgar muttered, stomping into the library. His notes and histories were scattered on the tables, where he left them last. He looked at them, and the schematics of his vision-summoning spell. He had made a few amendments since his last attempt, hoping to temporally refine its results. Khadgar looked at the notes and smiled. Then he picked up his vials of crushed gemstones, and headed downward—putting additional floors between himself and Medivh’s audience chamber—to one of the abandoned dining halls. Two levels lower was perfect. An ellipsoid of a room with stone fireplaces at each end, the great table put into service elsewhere, the ancient chairs lined across the wall from the single entrance. The floor was white marble, old and cracked but kept clean by Moroes’s relentless industry and drive. Khadgar laid out a magic circle of amethyst and rose quartz, still grinning as he laid out the lines. He was confident in his castings now, and did not need his ceremonial conjuration robes for luck. As he laid out the pattern of protection and abjuration, he smiled again. He was already shaping the energy within his mind, calling the required shades and types of magic, conforming them to their requisite shape, holding that fertile energy in abeyance until it was needed.
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Khadgar frowned. Were these some supplicants turned away by Moroes, or messengers with some other dark tidings for his master? Khadgar descended the tower to find out. He caught sight of the new arrival only briefly—a flash of a black cloak stepping into a guest room along the lower levels of the tower. Moroes was there, candle in hand, blinders in place, and as Khadgar slipped down the last few steps he could hear the castellan say “…Other visitors, they were less careful. They’re gone now.” Whatever response the new arrival made was lost, and Moroes pulled the door shut as Khadgar came up. “A guest?” asked the young man,Khadgar turned to ask about his comment, but the servant wow gold was already gone from the doorway. With the care of a burglar, Khadgar wow gold picked his way through the debris. It was as if a battle had erupted in the library. Spines were broken, covers were half-torn, pages were folded over upon themselves, signatures had been pulled wow gold from the bindings entirely. And this was for those books that were still mostly whole. More portfolios zxcmianbao had been pulled from their covers, and the dust on the tables covered a layer of papers and wow gold correspondences. Some of these were open, but some were noticeably still unread, their knowledge contained beneath their wax seals. “The Magus does not wow gold need an assistant,” muttered Khadgar, clearing a space at the end of one table and pulling out a chair. “He needs a housekeeper.” He shot a glance wow gold at the doorway to make sure that the castellan was well and truly gone. trying to see if there was any clue of the new arrival behind him. Only a closed door greeted his view. “Ayep,” replied the castellan. “Mage or merchant?” asked the young mage. “Couldn’t say,” said the castellan, already moving down the hall. “Didn’t ask, and the Emissary didn’t say.” “The Emissary,” repeated Khadgar, thinking of one of the mystery letters from Medivh’s great sleep. “So it’s political, then. For the Magus.” “Assume so,” said Moroes. “Didn’t ask. Not my place.” “So it is for the Magus,” said Khadgar. “Assume so,” said Moroes, with the same sleepy inflection. “We’ll be told when we need to know.” And with that he was gone, leaving Khadgar to stare at the shut door.
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